An Englishman on Safehold
by ElaraSilk
Summary: A 21st century Englishman wakes up on Safehold. Ride along as he explores the world he's now in...and tries to piece together his own past.
1. Awakening

**Safehold and all things in it belong to David Weber, from whose productive mind they sprang. I merely frolic in the garden which he has tended.**

**o-o-o**

1.

I woke up, and didn't remember going to sleep. My mind quickly ran over the alternatives; being knocked unconscious, getting extremely drunk, and so on. I put my hands on my head and felt no bruises or other injuries, and I didn't feel hungover.

So I opened my eyes.

It was dark. As my other senses caught up, I realised it was also quite dank, suggesting that I was in a cave or similar. But why would I be in a cave? I sat up with a start, and my head whacked something above me. The air felt slightly thin as I wheezed my first conscious breath, though at least it was fresh. Maybe I was near an entrance. Seriously, what on earth was I doing in a cave?

Rolling sideways instead, I soon dropped a short distance to the floor. My eyes were sharpening a little by this point, and it looked as though there might be some light ahead of me. I began crawling towards it and as my slow pace irritated me, essayed standing upright. I succeeded, albeit a little unsteadily, and staggered onwards into the brightening light.

I found myself on the side of a mountain. It was idyllic; little wildflowers scattered amongst grasses, stands of trees, I could see a little stream away down the hillside. What it completely lacked was any sign of people. Lack of injuries notwithstanding, finding civilisation was a must if I was going to survive.

Taking it as a bad sign that I had to actively think before heading downhill (down was rivers, coasts, valleys, people. Up was crags.), I started heading for the stream.

On my way down the hill, I noticed I was wearing blue trousers, and stopped for a moment to examine my attire. I didn't recognise any of it, though it was all comfortable and fitted well enough. My shirt was a lighter blue than my trousers, and my boots were black. There was the vague impression of a uniform, albeit one with no badges. Abandoning the thought as another mystery, I continued down the hill.

Reaching the little stream, I found the water was cold, and refreshing. I was careful not to drink too much, but even a couple of mouthfuls made me feel a bit better.

I walked alongside the stream for a while; after half an hour or so when I was feeling no ill effects from the water I drank my fill. I had still seen no sign of people, and wondered where I could possibly be?

Eventually I crossed a ridge and saw a village. Well, if you could call it that, I thought sourly, it didn't seem to have so much as a tarmaced road, let alone a telephone line. That was my last thought for a while, as at that point I lost consciousness.

I woke up again. At least this time I remembered having fainted, though once again I was in an unfamiliar place.

Someone must have found me on the hill above the village, because I was now on a bed, in a small whitewashed room with a wooden door. There was a man opposite me, wearing a curious brown hat over a brown robe. He looked like an escapee from Elizabethan England, dagger-beard and all.

Although – the shadows moved, the light flickered, and I realised it was a candle – maybe I was the one out of place?

"You are feeling a little restored, I trust?" he asked. "Few come down from the Mountains of Light, fewer even than venture into them."

I considered my physical state, finding myself to be powerfully in need of food, still confused about where I was, but otherwise mostly alright.

"I'm feeling better, thank you, though very hungry. Could I perhaps have some food?"

"Certainly. I'll have some brought, and then perhaps we can talk a little."

If he would be asking questions, that might not go so well. My stomach insisted that questions were a low priority right now, so I remained silent.

The man re-appeared fairly swiftly with a wooden bowl filled with a thick vegetable stew. He sat on a chair I had failed to notice earlier, and when I had made some progress with my stew he spoke again.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am Father Tohmas Broun, and I am the priest here in Greendale."

Clearing another mouthful, I replied, "I'm Cal."

"How did you get here, Cal?"

"I walked down from the hills, but I don't remember anything before this morning."

"Nothing? Not where you come from, or coming to Ernhart?"

"I remember my name, and little else." I realised with a shock that it was true and kept talking to cover how scared that made me, "Where is Ernhart?"

"Pasquale aid you! I have heard of such afflictions, but never met a victim of it before. Perhaps your memory will return over time."

"I hope so. Where are we?" I asked, hoping that more information could stave off panic.

"We are in the Duchy of Ernhart, one of the Border Lands between the Republic of Siddarmark and the Temple Lands."

The names meant nothing to me, and he could tell.

"It is worse than I feared. Do you remember anything, Cal? Do you remember Langhorne and the Archangels? Do you remember God Himself?"

I was still blank, and more scared all the time. The priest looked worried too, but he rallied.

"Right! Well, I do not know what has happened to you, my son, but I shall catechize you. We can make a start now, and I will return as I may, until you are able to take up your part in God's Plan."

Something in me rebelled at this. 'God is a fairy-tale!', it cried. I squashed it; Tohmas was taking me as a lost lamb at the moment, I should do nothing to make him see me as a wolf. Oddly the decision to deceive the priest made me calmer, gave me control of something separate from myself which I could focus on. I tried to listen as he began speaking steadily, with words that were clearly long-practiced and often told.

"God created Safehold for his people to live in simple harmony, guided and taught by his Archangels. Chief amongst the Archangels were Langhorne, Bedard, and Shan-Wei."

I held my focus for a while, but eventually the absurdity of the story, mixed with the priest's obvious sincerity, was too much for me, and I tuned in and out of his explanation until Father Tohmas finally left, suggesting that I sleep. I had no difficulty following this recommendation.

**o-o-o**

**Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes? Chapter 2 coming soon...**


	2. Abide With Me

**All characters thus far mentioned are mine, but the Church of God Awaiting, the Duchy of Ernhart and the rest of Safehold are David Weber's.**

**o-o-o**

2.

_Abide with me; fast falls the even-tide._

_The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide._

_When other helpers fail and comforts flee,_

_Help of the helpless O abide with me._

I was very confused to find that weeks were five days long, and church held on Wednesdays. I had been regaining my strength over several five-days, and it seemed I hadn't been eating properly for some time before I woke up. I filled out quickly, mostly on stew, potatoes and bread. Father Tohmas was baffled at my insistence on going for runs around the village, and I chose to restrict my press-ups, pull-ups and other exercises to times when he was visiting his parishioners. In much of my remaining time I learned from the Father, who was diligent in instructing me in the creed of the Church of God Awaiting, but also more than happy to tell me about the world around me.

The seasons turned swiftly; I had awoken in September, and by late October there was snow on the ground, and much of village life had come to a halt. Except for church, and that was why I was singing a hymn that seemed oddly familiar.

I stood amongst the people of Greendale, singing with a better voice than I thought I really deserved. I stumbled over the words of the second verse, as though I had known them differently. Neither Franceihn, on my left, nor Maikel, on my right, appeared surprised at the tripping of my tongue. Father Tohmas had told them my story, and asked if they would look after me while he was taking the service; and there weren't any hymnals for me to read from.

The sermon quoted the Book of Langhorne, "For how will a man profit if he gains all the world's power, but loses his soul?"

Two of my internal voices conflicted, one crying that was from the book of Matthew, and the other that there was no such thing as a soul. The first one I didn't understand, and the second was dangerous, so I squashed both, and instead listened in on Maikel's hushed agreement with his neighbour, that Father Tohmas had chosen his text today to make a point to two local farmers engaged in a boundary dispute. I was torn between respecting the Father's dedication to getting through to his congregation, and feeling the epic sweep of the verse of scripture was undermined a little by applying it to the location of a fence-line.

After the service, I went with Franceihn and Maikel to join them for a meal. Like the rest of Greendale, they were honest, hardworking, plain-spoken...and crushingly parochial. They knew little about events elsewhere in Ernhart, let alone further afield; they knew what was happening in the next villages over, and had a vague sense of what was happening in the market town of Nidder.

The mosaic of my memory still had more gaps than tiles, but I could tell that the good people of Greendale were not my people. They might welcome me, but I didn't belong here, and I resolved to leave when the snows cleared.

I continued to attend church loyally on Wednesdays, both to respect my host and make him feel that his religious instruction was successful. It wasn't just Abide With Me, or the one quote from the Book of Langhorne; most of the oldest hymns, and many of the most poetic parts of Holy Writ were familiar to me. That part of my mind which was currently sitting on all my memories whispered "Church of England" to me, then ran from me when I asked for more detail.

I mentioned an edited version of my memory when Father Tohmas and I were sitting over dinner one Wednesday night.

"Cal, that's marvellous!"

"Father?"  
"I have wondered how you would have stood before God and the Archangels if you had died in the mountains. Had you repented of all your sins to that point? Of course we hope that you had, but your remembering passages of the Writ, and hymns from the liturgy, is a hint that you have always done your duty by Mother Church."

"I suppose so, Father. I feel fairly sure I have always wanted to do my duty."

I carefully changed the subject.

As time turned towards November, it was apparently reaching the end of the year, and the festival of Winternight.

I grew aware of the fact that gift-giving was a custom at Winternight, and I decided I ought to gift something both to Father Tohmas and to Elaiyn, his housekeeper. Lack of ideas and resources drove it to the back of my mind for a while, though I began helping out at with some of the work in the village to rectify the latter.

Within my own mind, I had several personal freakouts over the fact that for all my lack of memory, parts of the world around me seemed Wrong, with no idea of what would have been right, but kept coming back to Gendlin:

_What is true is already so._

_Owning up to it doesn't make it worse._

_Not being open about it doesn't make it go away._

_And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with._

_Anything untrue isn't there to be lived._

_People can stand what is true,_

_for they are already enduring it._

Gendlin saved me; if all the evidence was that this was Safehold, believing it was Earth (what was Earth!? I knew not) might have destroyed me. I might never find all the answers, but I could try.

I suppressed the additional question of who Gendlin was.

For all the Greendalers' parochialism I began to piece together more about how Safehold worked.

The Church was huge, with a priest in every village, monasteries scattered across the land and vast secular estates, including an entire nation - the Temple Lands. Priests belonged to different orders, each with their specialism, such as the Order of Pasquale for medicine, or the Order of Schueler for the Inquisition. An immediate mental note to avoid the latter; the word Inquisition sounded all sorts of alarms in my skull. Father Tohmas was a Bedardist, whose specialism was the human mind.

There was a hierarchy going up through upper-priests, bishops, archbishops to the Grand Vicar and Council of Vicars who were substitutes for Langhorne and the Archangels. I refrained from commenting that despite around half the archangels having been women all the priests seemed to be men.

The archangels had, so the story went, made Safehold under God's direction, but Shan-Wei had fallen into lust for power and commenced a war against Langhorne, who had destroyed her with _rakurai_ from the heavens. Seemed mighty convenient, and my memory told me to remember Paradise Lost – if only I could - but I had to admit that whoever wrote the _Holy Writ_ had known a fair amount; they had mapped the whole world, and given instructions for cultivation, animal husbandry, and so on. It was definitely a puzzle.

The villagers all seemed to believe implicitly, and tithed to the Church; nay, double-tithed, an average of perhaps one fifth of their income. They also treated Tohmas with genuine respect and reverence.

The fact that we were in the Duchy of Ernhart seemed to figure much less in daily life than Mother Church; certainly Father Tohmas did a lot for his flock, and I saw no representative of the Duke before winter set in. Greendale had a mayor, but he mostly did what Father Tohmas suggested.

"Have you remembered any more of your past, Cal?"

"Very little, Father."

"There is one thing that occurred to me. You are literate, are you not?"

"Yes, Father."

"Do you feel any spark of a vocation, my son? If you may have been a priest, you will want to take care," Tohmas gazed at me fixedly, looking concerned.

"Why is that, Father?"

"Once a priest, always a priest. If you have ever taken the vows, you are still bound by them, whether you remember them or nay."

"I think I would have remembered being ordained, Father, surely?"

"But would you not have remembered having a child? Being married? Being initiated into a guild? You are old enough to have done any or all of those things."

He may have kept talking, but I lost him completely. Lost my surroundings. Focussed back on one word.

Married.

Fuck.

Where is she, and how do I get home to her?

Fuck!

What is her NAME?

A vague sensation of movement, of laughter. A wash of dark hair, a wicked look in deep brown eyes.

"Miranda," I breathed. "Miranda, Miranda, Miranda." I realised I was rocking backwards and forwards a little, and couldn't bring myself to stop.

"Cal, are you alright?"

I dragged some of my awareness off the litany, and glanced at Tohmas.

"Cal?"

"It - it just came back to me Father. I was - am - married. Miranda, that was her name."

"Miranda? Is that a Siddarmarkian name, or perhaps from the out-islands?"

I looked blankly at him.

"It seems you may have to travel, Cal. If you are married, you must try to return to your wife! I am not sure where you need to go, but Miranda is not a name I have ever heard in Ernhart, and I don't think it is from the Temple Lands either, so your best start is probably Siddarmark."

"I will need to work my way, Father, or I won't get very far."

"That is true. In springtime there will be some travellers going to Siddarmark; there always are. I will put in a good word for you, and perhaps Allain will help also."

Allain the mayor would do what Tohmas asked, but I still appreciated how oblivious the priest seemed to his own power in the village.

"Thank you, Father," I gasped out, as the word Miranda kept flowing through my head.

I was still learning dogmas of the church from the priest. And I was still grieving for my lost wife, whom I barely remembered, and cursing my mind for failing me so abominably. I threw myself into physical work and kept exercising; it didn't help my memory, but I still felt that I was reclaiming something I had lost.

By the time Spring rolled around in March - December and January had disappeared from the calendar, and I declined to ask anyone about them - I had got to know most people in the village, at least of those who were vaguely sociable. I could never really relax with them though - I knew I didn't belong in Greendale, and they had all known one another from childhood. They were, at least, all in favour of helping me to get on my way. One even said that searching for your lost wife was a worthy start to a story. I seared off his head with my glare, and he didn't talk to me much afterward.

Perhaps I shouldn't find it too ironic that he was the one who found me a place with a mixed caravan of traders and returning pilgrims. It was late March of Year of God 889, and I was leaving the Duchy of Ernhart to find my place on Safehold.

**o-o-o**

**Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes?**


	3. Miranda

**David Weber owns Safehold, he is the meistersinger.**

**o-o-o**

3.

The first shock was getting used to dragons. My mind insisted that dragons were mythical, grand beasts which breathed fire and talked, and hoarded treasure. My eyes told me they were ground-bound monsters of draft animals, with six legs, the power of maybe eight horses, and a smell to match. Though my mind laughed at 8 horse-power as though it were nothing, which confused me a little when I saw how much weight a dragon could pull.  
And apparently these weren't even the biggest of dragons. My astonishment at least helped to cement my cover; clearly someone who didn't know dragons couldn't have travelled very far, so nobody expected me to know much of anything about the world around me.

I settled in on a dragon-drawn cart, with a tent pitched amongst the goods, shared with a couple of the caravan guards. Hard-faced men with battered, well-used looking swords, they were civil enough but untalkative.

We passed through a series of villages much like Greenvale, in which our guards relaxed substantially and the odd market town, where they looked wary, and one or two left the caravan to rejoin us later. The presence or absence of Town Guards seemed to make all the difference, which said interesting things about what our guards got up to on their time off.

The towns we stopped in looked pokey to me, small and undeveloped. I kept expecting more light, faster movement and more noise, yet if you had sat me down and asked me what I was looking for, I couldn't have told you. We occasionally stayed in an inn, but mostly I slept on the wagon wherever we were. Our progress was slow, because in most of the towns we would stop for a full day and do some trading in the market for trinkets and supplies, but it was steady - dragons would eat anything, and simply didn't seem to need to stop.

The second town, whose name I immediately forgot, was where we met the semaphore; a wooden tower on a rock foundation on a hill above the town, with sequences of shutters to pass messages along the chain. Apparently the semaphore primarily linked Mother Church to the far-flung bishops, but mere Kings and Dukes were sometimes permitted access. I gazed at it, wonderingly. The vast engineering expense it represented; the sheer flow of information that Mother Church seemed to require…The dark portion of my mind, which sat and watched, and had strong opinions about dragons, seemed to be thinking hard. I had a – call it a vision – of how one parallel of Mother Church had run, with a priest in every village, and one ultimate authority in the Holy City. But, my memory told me, the Catholic Church had never had communications like the semaphore, at least not while it was the only church. Catholic priests had been able to stray far from orthodoxy, "Catholic" peasants had followed other religions, without Rome's knowledge. Mother Church had much tighter control. I reached for more knowledge, more parallels, and came up empty. I took part of my pay from the caravan master, and got thoroughly drunk in a tavern; if my memory wouldn't co-operate, I would pickle it.

We encountered the semaphore just over the border of Ernhart, in the Duchy of Charlz; it took us a couple of five-days to pass through Charlz, which was much the same, and then we reached Mhartynberg. Mhartynberg was a city, and a good-sized one, capital of the Duchy of Charlz. The cathedral was impressive, and for a wonder the Duke's palace was nearly as big! At Mhartynberg the caravan dispersed, much of it turning back into the mountains, and I was paid off. The reason for this was simple – at Mhartynberg, we reached the Holy Langhorne Canal, and canal travel was faster and cheaper than wagons. I signed on with a barge-crew going down the Langhorne towards Siddarmark, and did some honest work loading cargo.

And then we entered Siddarmark. Siddarmark was interesting; it was a much stronger state than Ernhart or indeed Charlz; the locks were all in good order, and at every lock, and in every town, was a detachment of the Regiments.

'Mediaeval!' cried my shit of a mind, though it softened that opinion slightly when we reached Lake City, which had a full Regiment stationed there. A mixture of arbalesters and pikemen, the 72nd Regiment was a well-drilled professional formation – the canal passed their parade ground, and we saw them engaged in manoeuvres. Apparently there was a militia Regiment based there also. A while after we passed them, the phrase 'New Model Army' floated up from my mind, which was apparently quite respectable. I wasn't entirely sure why I felt comfortable judging the effectiveness and professionalism of soldiers, but I let that slide.

The further we passed into Siddarmark – across the Wing Lakes, through Traymos and Lake Maysn on the Hildermoss River, to the city of Lakeside – the more it struck me that, unlike in Ernhart and Charlz, the towns here didn't have walls. They relied on the Regiments in Siddarmark, and the Siddarmarkians on the barge were fiercely proud of them, a symbol of the Republic greater than the flag, or the Lord Protector, or Siddar City.

I didn't feel proud of the Regiments, and this was one final sign that I didn't belong in Siddarmark. I didn't encounter anywhere that seemed familiar; anyone who recognised me. None of the towns or cities made me eager to stay. And no-one had heard the name Miranda; the stabbing pain slowly faded into a dull ache, brought back whenever the way a woman moved made me hope, for just a second, it might be her.

As days and five-days passed, we moved onwards through the edges of Hildermoss Province, and turned onto the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal. It was summer now, and I had been gently browning in the sun, my hair even more gently lightening. Life on the canals was good – easy times moving along the canal, honest work shifting cargo, always seeing new sights. I could understand why there were family traditions in working on the canals, and most of the barge captains had uncles and cousins in the same trade, maybe a few in the Canal Service working the locks and dredging the channels.

Guarnak, once we reached it, was a good sized city. A vital link in the chains of rivers, canals and roads holding the vast Republic together, it sat at the junction between the Guarnak-Sylmahn canal running down into the heart of the Republic, and the Guarnak-Ice Ash canal heading up into the frozen northlands. I liked it quite a bit, and was glad when my barge went north along the Ice Ash – I got paid off again, and spent a couple of days sampling Guarnak before signing on with a barge to Myntomah on the Taimana Canal.

Guarnak was also where I met my first Charisians, who had a substantial presence among the Republic's traders. Concentrated along the coasts, some of them spread up the canals and roadways, and Guarnak was their furthest outpost in any numbers. I liked them; mostly younger sons of Siddar-based Charisian families, they were outgoing and friendly, and eager for information from the Border States.

What was more interesting yet, their wares were…almost industrial. They sold manufactures more than bulk goods or handicrafts, and while I placed no credence on claims that they broke the Proscriptions of Jwo-Jeng (and what cared I if they did!?) they were closer to it than anyone else I'd met.

By this point I had travelled far enough, I could cover for my gaps by talking about what I did remember, where I had been recently, and just ducking or side-slipping around queries about where I came from. I was also pretty confident that I didn't have any children.

I left Guarnak on a larger barge going down towards Siddar, with a letter of introduction to family of my new Charisian friends there. The barge didn't really need me, but I worked enough to earn my dinners and saved my coins for Siddar. We passed through Myntomah, turned onto the Siddar Canal, and then it was a straight run down to Siddar City.

Oh, Siddar City felt so tantalisingly close to a homecoming. It was a real city at last! It was big and bustling, even well past sundown. I enjoyed myself, found some lodgings, went to see the Protector's Palace - open for all, amazingly - got a little drunk in a few taverns, and that was just my first day there.

After only a few days, I moved myself into the Charisian quarter - the lodgings were cheaper, and so was the drinking, probably because non-Charisians mostly stayed out. I presented my letter of introduction to the parents of one of my young friends in Guarnak, and met some more people. Before my coin entirely ran out, I had made some contacts, and eventually I decided to accept an offer to go as purser on the galleon _Kraken-Bait_, when the usual purser was taken ill.

We set sail for Charis, and I set about finding out everything about the place I could from the crew. It was going to be a long voyage.

**o-o-o**

**Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes? What should Cal do when he gets to Charis?**


	4. A New Beginning

**o-o-o Safehold and all within belongs to the Weber of David. o-o-o**

I was in heaven. We were sailing the briny deep, and it was so fun! The crew thought I was completely cracked, but that was better than them thinking I was on the take with their wages.I thought I had never been on a ship like Krakenbait before, but that I had been on the ocean. It was in trying to piece together how that worked that I made a breakthrough.

I knew my name. I knew my wife's name. I knew that, whatever Father Broun thought, I had never heard of the Church of God Awaiting before I woke up in a cave in the Mountains of Light. I knew that I was from Earth, not Safehold. The breakthrough came when I had spent some time sitting on the bowsprit, enjoying the feeling of the ship crashing through the waves. Walking back to my poky little cabin, I felt shivery and cold, and a word came to mind."Cryonics."A passing sailor looked at me oddly, then dismissed me and went on about his work. I holed up in my cabin, changed out of my wet gear, and thought on that word.

I - Cal - had known that one day I would die; and I didn't want to die. I wanted to see everything. I wanted to know how history came out; and not believing in re-incarnation or the soul, if I was to make it to the far future, make it to the stars, I had to do it physically.  
It was like a life insurance policy, except the beneficiary was...myself. I had signed up to be frozen when I was on the point of death, or had just died. Apparently, from my physical appearance in my late twenties, that had come a lot sooner than I had from that key realisation, so much had name was Cal - short for Calvin, yes like the cartoon boy. That's why I always shortened it; I didn't like the association with either a cartoon strip or a Protestant theologian. That disappointed my parents a bit, but what can you do?

I was an adoptive citizen of London, greatest city on Earth, though I had always retained a fondness for Sheffield where I was raised.  
I had gone through usual childish phases and teenage misadventures, but always done alright in school. It had taken me years to work out what to do with my life; fortunately my degree in Computer Science had been appropriate. I had worked on the interface between programmers and management, doing enough coding to count as a developer while mostly translating each party's needs into language the other could understand; then started teaching other people to do the in my degree I had met Miranda; she was younger than me, but better established. London born and bred, she'd been in work right from age 16. It was a loss to academia, she was so sharp she could cut you in half and worked all hours. I had befriended her as a dutiful bit of networking to help me find a job, then gradually drifted closer and closer. She had proposed shortly before we moved in together; even her one concession to propriety was untraditional.I had never persuaded her to sign up for cryonics; I think she was happy with one life, she didn't feel a need to keep her body around in hopes of coming back one day.

We hadn't managed to have children, though we had been trying. Before I died I had banked some sperm so it could be used in fertility treatment - IVF. I wondered if she had gone ahead and had children after I died; if she had ever re-married? There was no way to know, but I thought she would have had my child, then eventually found someone new. Living alone had never suited her well. I hoped she had been happy.I spent several days just remembering things about 'Randa. I had loved her to bits, and I was coming to terms with the fact that whatever had happened she was almost certainly long dead. I couldn't see the technology having developed to get to another world in less than several centuries, and people had clearly been on Safehold for hundreds of years more. The pangs of loss kept hitting me sporadically over days, but I guess I had already suspected that she was lost, from the moment I first remembered her.  
I got back to business; my professional skills were irrelevant on this world, but I almost certainly had knowledge that I could use. I had lived in an industrial society, had some scientific training, read some history; I had done three years of military training at university. I should be able to leverage some combination of that into a living, right?It was bittersweet, spending my spare time reminiscing about what I had lost, but that was easier than trying to figure out a whole world.

On what I had seen so far, there was a big population. A whole lot of people, enough to easily support mid-Victorian technology - steam, railways and telegraphs. And yet thanks to the proscriptions of bloody Jwo-Jeng, what we had instead was a bastardised mixture of semaphore with galleys, very early cannon, and canals...with a world government in the form of the Church of God Awaiting; a world government that had real teeth, with pre-prepared Fifth Columnists in every nation amongst the truly faithful, a country of its own in the Temple Lands, and a traditional power to do everything up to and including choose monarchs elsewhere.

This was a Church with power the most megalomaniac Popes could only dream of; and thinking of that made me realise something:

It was only a matter of time before Safehold saw its own Reformation. If the experience of Europe was anything to go by, the key difference between successful reformers and crushed heretics was whether or not they had a secure base. Lutherans had Saxony from the very earliest days, and that let them avoid the fate of the Hussites or the Cathars.  
I was never a religious man; I wouldn't go so far as to say I had hated religion, but the religion of my life was very mild and consensual. The Church of England, of old vicars who ran the village fete, of fundraisers to repair the church roof, and occasional blasts against governments which cut benefits. The Church of God Awaiting was a very different beast, not least because it was clearly based on a lie. I knew for a fact that I had been born on another world, thus proving their Creation myth false just by existing. I could not be a friend of the Church of God Awaiting, not in good conscience. And I could never tell the truth about myself and have a hope of the Church letting me survive.

Well then, to misquote Wilde's last words about wallpaper - either the Church would go or I would.

I had to be realistic though - there were too many true believers. The Church wouldn't be gone short of eradicating all its followers. So I wasn't trying to destroy it completely, because I didn't want to turn into a genocide.  
So my real goal was to break the Church's social dominance - a Safehold with secular governments would be favourite. How did I get from here to there, though?  
I could see two basic options: the direct route, and the...less direct...route. The less direct was scientific - do whatever I could to foster free inquiry and research, and hope that as that developed some of the Church's lies would come to light. Little things like realising it wasn't a curse from Pasquale that made sailors who failed to eat their vegetables get scurvy, simply a defect in human DNA; that other "curses" were micro-organisms just doing their thing; that sort of business.  
The second option was to foster schism and heresy within the Church. A Church in crisis, a Church split in two or more parts, would lack moral authority and the ability to enforce the Proscriptions. Secular rulers would take their sides based on faith, and personal advantage, and local rivalries. It would probably get bloody, it was highly risky for me personally - but it would show quicker results. I was tempted towards the second option, just because it might show real, tangible benefits in my lifetime.

It was hard to keep up with my work as a purser while plotting how to turn the world upside down, but I soon realised that I didn't have enough information. Any more would have to wait for arrival in Charis. It wouldn't be many more days, then I could start on the mission of the rest of my life.

**o-o-o Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes? o-o-o**


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